Sony won't use Android Wear

Sony's love of proprietary tech has been a subject of controversy for years, if not decades. The company stubbornly tried to impose its own standards on consumers, from minidiscs to memory stick cards and more often than not it merely antagonised consumers.

It appears that Sony is at it again.

Sony Mobile exec Ravi Nookala told CNET that the company will not use Android Wear in its upcoming smart watches. It will stick to its own, Android-based SmartWatch platform instead.

It should be pointed out that Sony has been working on smart watches for years and that it had products on shelves long before other big brands. However, Sony's smart watches were never a hit, since the technology just wasn't there yet. Pricing was an issue, too.

Samsung also used a Tizen-based OS on its first smart watches, but it has signed up as an Android Wear partner. Motorola and LG are on board, too.

However, this does not mean that Sony will never do an Android Wear device. It is possibly that the company simply concluded its SmartWatch platform is a bit more mature than Android Wear for the time being and that there is no reason to move to an entirely new platform right now. This does not mean that Sony won't do so later on, with subsequent generations of wearables.